"If there is one thing that you can count on in war it is that there is nothing you can count on in war."

--

Richard M. Watt

La Triviata

The Comte de Sade served as an officer in the French Army during the Seven Years War (1756-1763), rising to Captain, before going on to gain greater fame in other fields of endeavour.

Visiting his Mediterranean Fleet in 1903, King Edward VII expressed a desire to pay an incognito call on Naples, prompting his secretary to observe that it would be difficult of accomplishment, considering that "no other human being in the world would come with eight battleships, four cruisers, four destroyers, and a dispatch boat."

Of 274 triremes carried on the Athenian navy list between 377 and 322 B.C., only15 were lost to the sea.

In 1914 a French Army field bakery, with 40 bakers and 22 administrative and support personnel, could produce 2,000 rations of 750 grams each every 24 hours.

Public and political indifference to the armed forces during the post-Civil War period was so great that in 1877 Congress actually adjourned for the summer without arranging to pay the troops for the next fiscal year.

During the Bulgarian siege of Adrianole in 921, the Patrician Leo, who commanding the defending Byzantine troops, had a penchant for engaging in single combat, for which his troops nicknamed him “Stupid Leo.”

In the course of his career, Napoleon handed out some 3,400 titles of nobility, an impressive accomplishment for someone who started out as a radical revolutionary.

Among the American troops killed during the abortive attempt to take Quebec in December 1775 was one woman, Jemina Warner, felled by a British cannon ball while helping to work an artillery piece.